An avid supporter of oral history, educator historian Carter G. Woodson maintained that an understanding of the past would enlighten present generations. Illuminating Woodson's spirit and philosophy, this article is written to investigate oral history as a theory and practice used to problematize traditional assumptions of history while licensing…

Teaching the history of Native North America is difficult. Teachers must ask students to read and to write about past peoples whose transmission of knowledge was oral and performative. The available pool of books and articles for assignment often work more as exercises in "othering" than understanding. And everyone in the classroom must…

Can students learn religious history from movies? While using film as text is likely to attract students' interest, will such a course be able to negotiate the complex intertwining of film with religion and history to provide students with more than mere entertainment? Will students respond to a challenge to move beyond a movie's surface visual…

In California, and elsewhere, faculty are being encouraged to create "service learning opportunities" for their students, such as having social work students volunteer at a local soup kitchen, or having environmental studies students reforest the local watershed. While these endeavors have obvious social value, their education value…

History gets a really bad "rep" in school. History teachers seemed to do everything they could to suck the interesting out of history, leaving only names, dates, and battles to memorize until the test was over. History can be brought up on its feet and given room to play when it's combined with theater. They work so well together. In this article,…

This paper examines the debate over the teaching of Canadian history that has been in progress in Canada since the early 1990s. It considers four criticisms: schools do not teach enough Canadian history and students, therefore, do not know it; the history that is taught is no longer sufficiently national; social history has destroyed the old…

The American emphasis on utility and practicality in education was expanded over the course of the twentieth century, particularly in the development of community colleges with their dual mission of liberal arts education and vocational training. Because of their mission and their dependence on local funding and community requirements, two-year…

This article explores the importance of developing strong adult education programs within a broader collaborative effort between museum staff and K-12 teachers. Focusing on history museums, the first section discusses the importance of museum visits for K-12 history learning and how we need to reconsider some of the primary purposes for these…

Over the past few years, there has been considerable explication of what it means to think historically. According to this research literature, expert historians think about such issues as placing historical events within context and chronology, considering the differing perspectives of participants in events, and taking the bias and intention of…

The Persistent Issues in History Laboratory for Virtual Field Experience (PIH-LVFE) combines a database of video cases of authentic classroom practices with multiple resources and tools to enable pre-service social studies teachers to virtually observe teachers implementing problem-based learning activities. In this paper, we present the results…

This case study examined how mentoring experiences might encourage teachers to consider and adopt a problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI) framework for teaching. We mentored six teachers over 15 months as they planned and implemented PBHI teaching, reflected on their experiences, and then engaged in peer mentoring of other teachers. Data…

This article challenges the tradition in much history education research of privileging teachers' content knowledge--and within this area, their understanding of evidence and epistemology--in explorations of the knowledge shaping their pedagogical reasoning and practice. Moving away from the normative statements that often follow from this…

Reported in this article are the results of research that explored which feature films teachers are using to teach high school United States history and how and why they are using these films. The terms "feature film" and "Hollywood film" are used throughout to refer to movies commercially created for a mass audience, often for…

Many students assume that history has nothing to do with them and therefore is a waste of their time, so finding a way to get involuntary history students truly involved in a topic is always the most challenging aspect of teaching it. As passive listeners they will remember little; as active participants they will remember more and--in at least a…

One of the most challenging problems faced by teachers of history is how to give voice to the vast majority of people who lived in the past. People's knowledge of history tends to center on the great and important because they are tied to extant written records, almost all of which were produced by and/or about people of high stature in society.…